Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Come on Baby...Don't Fear the Reaper

I spent a long night in the bushes at Cheech Air Force Base (do they plant poison ivy there on purpose?) with my trusty telephoto lens and my high speed film, but I finally have the proof I need to confront Blicky. Our relationship has really been strained since he accepted that defense contract, but I never realized how high-level his work really was.

Apparently he was the lead engineer for the new remote control fighter-bomber aircrafts known as unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs. When asked about the effectiveness of the virtual cockpit, pilots could not comment because they were too busy making "eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh" gun noises, "jjjjjrrrreeeeeeooooww" airplane swoops and pweeeooooouuu" explosion sounds. I finally confronted Blicky with this new project because I really felt he was betraying our family's ideals about peace. I feel so much better now though because he explained that the new technology will reduce deaths on bombing missions in Afghanistan.

Then I asked him, "But Blicky, doesn't this new technology just remove us from the violent impact or our weapons? What about Afghan civilians? Doesn't this just further distance us from the human victims of our actions, be it US or foreign, whom we have already deemed as 'other,' inferior and somehow less human? It doesn't strike you as a little eerie that our news media is extolling the wonders of an air-conditioned command center for these 'armchair pilots' who can drive to work and use weapons dubbed "Reaper" and "Predator" to kill other human beings from 7,500 away?" Blicky responded "Mao, look something shiny!" then ran away.